Las Vegas Saturday, Dec 21, 2019

Woke up around 8:30am in a much quieter parking garage than I fell asleep in.  I woke up slowly and enjoyed the morning before my bladder finally demanded that I get up.  Luckily, due to Fridays adventures, I knew where both bathrooms in the Miracle Mile were located.  If there is one major complaint about the Strip, it would be the lack of bathrooms.  They have places selling alcohol every 10 feet and they should have as many bathrooms. 

I had seen some advertisements the day before about breakfast specials and finally found one at the PBR Rockers & Grill restaurant.  They had a nice outside seating area with fire pits and heaters, and it was a nice position for people watching.  Got a full breakfast for less than $5 and a hot chocolate full of booze and a souvenir cup for $15.   I missed that the drink came in a souvenir cup and was initially irked, but over the weekend it came in very handy.  I was able to refill the cup and move from location to location without it being obvious.  I even took it into the Cirque show and no one said a thing. 

The Cirque show was the entire reason I went to Las Vegas.  I’d seen the documentary of the Beatles “Love” Cirque du Soleil show with Gil and it moved that particular Cirque show directly to the top of the list.  The show was at 7pm and I had a full day to fill before I got there.

Breakfast got a little interesting when I realized I’d forgot my wallet in the car and had to make arrangements to go back and get it.  I offered to leave my phone with the waitress and run back to the parking garage.  Which she agreed too.  My headphones got messed up in the transaction and I was a little irked about that, but she also re-filled my hot chocolate with booze for me, so I forgave her.  Plus, she was really cool to let me run back to the car. 

I was starting to get warm and unfortunately had my coat with me.  I made the decision to buy a tote bag, which are on every corner and not too expensive.  I needed to be able to put my coat in it, my new souvenir cup once it was empty and anything else, I might pick up along the way.  I also needed headphones as one of my ear buds was now missing the cushion.  Found a little gift shop and grabbed what I needed.

Worked my way down the street a little more where I ran into the CBS Research Center.  I’d read about this and it was penciled on my list, but I never looked up where it was, so figured I wouldn’t make it there.  But lucky me, I walked right by it and got recruited to watch a pilot of a possible new tv show and give some opinions about it.  It was fun.  And I got $15 for doing it.

I spent 30 minutes at the research center and then headed south down the strip towards the Flamingo.  The Flamingo has a wildlife habitat behind the resort, and I wanted to go see it.  I had read that it was 15 acres, which I thought was really generous for a casino on valuable real estate.  Turns out it’s a wildlife habitat nestled on their 15-acre property.  The habitat is really small and is mostly a backdrop for their wedding chapel.  It was still a very nice little habitat for mostly birds and fish.  They have a number of giant koi fish and lots of different types of birds, including flamingos, ducks and pelicans.  

I worked my way out of the Flamingo and wandered around the LINQ area.  I hadn’t previously heard of this resort, but it’s a nice area.  They have the hotel and casino like all the others, but there is a car-free street called the LINQ Promenade.  They had quirky shops and lots of small restaurants.  There was zip lining above the street and at the end there is a giant ferris wheel called the High Roller.  I enjoyed a snack at the Favorite Bistro and then headed back to the main street to work my way down the strip.  I had totally missed the Gordon Ramsey Fish and Chips restaurant while I was looking for a snack.  He has a number of restaurants in Vegas and I didn’t eat at a single one.  I generally tripped over one right after I’d already eaten.  Next time, I’ll be making more of an effort.

Next point of interest was Circus Circus.  One of the original anchor hotels/casinos of the Strip, I felt like I should at least take a look.  I’d been there once a long time ago and really don’t remember much.  It is a cute set up and the entire thing is very family friendly.  Adult games on the first floor of the tent and carnival games for the kids on the 2^nd floor of the tent.  Also, on the 2^nd floor is the circus acts that perform every couple of hours.  I hung out and watched a Brazilian Arial act that lasted about 10 minutes.  Cirque has me spoiled as I found it unimpressive and I realized that maybe I was turning into a snob.  I can’t do any of those things…and its free!  Its not like the casino is going to be paying for the A list to perform for free.  Perhaps if I hadn’t walked the 2 miles from LINQ to Circus Circus, I would have been less irked.  But it was full of people and children and it was loud.  I didn’t spend much time there before heading back to the strip for the walk back North to the Mirage.  My Cirque show was in 2 hours and there were things I wanted to see at the Mirage.

The Mirage offers two free interesting activities:  Exploding Fireballs (which I forgot about) and the Coral Reef Aquarium which turns out is an aquarium in reception directly behind the check in desk.  It’s a nice aquarium but not at all what I had I mind.  At this point I had 1 hour before my Cirque show and had I checked my phone I would have gone outside for the Exploding Fireballs, but I forgot.  Ended up at entrance to the Cirque show where I picked up my ticket from Will Call and wandered about the Beatles shop.  The Beatles shop had some really adorable things.  I was able to issue some self-control and didn’t buy anything.  Once I got into the theater, I hit the concessions for a Yellow Submarine (and overpriced alcoholic beverage) and a bucket of popcorn.  Turns out I was hungry again because I ate almost that entire bucket before the show started.  Probably should have picked up a snack while waiting.  The show was good, excellent music, some really heartwarming tributes to the band and some interesting circus acts.  Not one of my favorites but it was still worth the effort.

I decided to hit one more activity before winding up for the night.  Caesars Palace has an Atlantis Fountain Show and I was walking by Caesars Palace on the way back to my car.  The show is all the way in the back of the shopping center.  A shopping center full of mostly high-end designer stores that I can’t afford: Rolex, Prada etc.  There was a NatGeo art gallery that I enjoyed.  I’d seen a number of the artist speak at the NatGeo Live shows in Tampa and it was good to see their work again.  Once I got all the way to the back of the shopping center, there was a 20 min wait.  I was really tired.  And kind of hungry but my belly was full of nutritionless popcorn and there wasn’t really room.  I finally found a corner and sat on the floor to await the show.  The show is a really bad animatronics show about the falling of Atlantis.  I don’t think the animatronics have been updated since the 70’s.  Disney’s original Hall of Presidents were better than this.  The audio was equally bad, and I was tired, and my feet hurt and I should have skipped this.  But I got to see the Nat Geo gallery and caught a Disney gallery (where the attendants insisted that all the artist from the Festival of the Arts were there – they weren’t) and I was happy to see a number of the pieces I like.  But eventually made it back to the car.  I tried to see the rain show at Miracle Mile but missed the last show when I jumped into a store next to it for 2 minutes.  I guess it wasn’t very long.  I put almost 10 miles on my feet, and I was tired.  I watched 1 episode of NCIS before falling asleep.